Subpixel level Pathtracing
How considering subpixels can increase the perceived resolution of a pathtracer
J.C. de Munck (TU Delft - Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science)
C.J. Peters – Mentor (TU Delft - Computer Graphics and Visualisation)
Elmar Eisemann – Mentor (TU Delft - Computer Graphics and Visualisation)
Michael Weinmann – Mentor (TU Delft - Computer Graphics and Visualisation)
G. Smaragdakis – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Cyber Security)
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Abstract
In this paper, we propose techniques to increase the effective resolution of a pathtracer without changing the resolution of the screen for which it is rendered. These make use of the fact that displays are made up of pixels, each of which is made up of three distinct subpixels. By setting luminance values for subpixels rather than colour values for a full pixel, we can create a higher fidelity image. This is already used in rendering text, but has not yet been applied to a pathtracer. It is done in three distinct ways; firstly we send three rays per pixel, each centred at a subpixel to obtain a value for every subpixel, the second method is using a filter used for downscaling text. Lastly, we implement a technique that makes use of the aforementioned filter without increasing the number of samples needed. By sampling a random subpixels each frame for each pixel and combining neighbouring pixels proportional to the filter. We find that these methods are quite effective at the goal of increasing perceived resolution in high-contrast scenes.